"Whoever came up with the concept of staircases probably did not have Philip Stanley Carpenter in mind!" she announces unexpectedly, as if she wants everyone to ask her to explain herself. I hate my mother. She's in the emergency room because her son fell down a flight of stairs, and she's trying to make light-hearted conversation by belittling him. Of course, no one responds to her. Everyone here has their own problems. Sensing everyone's utter indifference, my mother modifies her strategy. "He's epileptic, you know." This time she addresses a particular woman, so she can be guaranteed at least some form of response.
"Oh, that's terrible! Do you think he'll be okay?" The woman she has singled out looks physically about only ten years older than her, but she must have developed her fashion sense sometime in the early forties in response to war rationing. Her dress looks like it was stitched together using men's shirts and her shoes look like they'd long ago given up on being shoes and were only sticking around out of sympathy for her. She must have walked here.
My mother, of course, is milking this attention for all it's worth. "Yes, it is terrible. I'm always worried to death about him having a seizure and something like this happening. It's worst on your nerves, you know, always having to worry."
I knew that she would eventually try to use this incident to win sympathy for herself. Phil was on his way upstairs to watch Jeopardy! when he had a seizure and fell down the stairs. He probably would have had the seizure anyway, but it wouldn't have been nearly as bad if she hadn't made him use the upstairs TV. This happens a lot in our house. Only one of our TVs has cable, and the one that doesn't has a big green spot on it from when Phil and I were playing with magnets. Phil usually goes upstairs when she asks him to, but she usually doesn't ask during Jeopardy!.
"Phil, honey, could you please watch your show on the upstairs TV?"
"No."
"But I need to stay by the phone when I watch my infomercial. There's no phone upstairs."
"But this is the Tournament of Champions."
"You can watch that upstairs. My infomercial is on channel thirty-one. The TV upstairs doesn't get channel thirty-one."
"Maybe you could tape it."
"TRACY!"
I could hear could hear from the next room. I had already put my book down, knowing that she would resort to this.
"What."
"Don't say 'what', just come here."
I went into the living room.
"Take your brother upstairs so he can watch his show."
"He can walk. Why doesn't he go himself?"
"Just do it, Tracy."
My mother does this sort of thing all the time. She makes me get Phil to do what she wants because she can't pull rank on him. The old "Because I'm your mother" line wouldn't work on him-she's too afraid of killing him to enforce it. I swear, she acts like she found a baby bird that fell out of its nest and now she has to nurse it back to health. I, of course, get no such treatment. She makes up for going easy on Phil by driving me like a slave. I always have some menial chore, from cleaning the bathroom to changing the contact paper in all the drawers. I think she's trying to make up for all of my years as a tomboy by giving me a crash course in her idea of womanhood: keep the house clean and don't talk back to the man. Or in her case, Phil.
The doctor is done with Phil now. It turns out it wasn't all that serious; he broke his arm in two places, but he has a cast now and he'll be fine in a few weeks. Phil is so skinny that the cast weighs down his left arm. It kind of makes him lean over when he walks. Actually, it's probably my imagination. I tease him about it anyway.
"That cast is making you walk like a monkey."
"Shut up. It does not."
"Does too."
"Does not. It makes me look cool!"
He has always wanted to get a cast. I think he envied the other boys who could run around and play games and get in the sort of mischief that gets arms broken.
"You should tell people you got it run over by a car." Seeing the doctor having a hushed conversation with my mom, I think of another excellent reason for lying to people: no one ever believes a kid who says he got his broken arm falling down stairs. It's become code for "My dad did it." But it doesn't look like that's what they're talking about. My mom would be a lot angrier than she is now. They must be talking about something else.
I find out what they were talking about as soon as our car leaves the parking lot. "We're going to go get you a helmet," my mother tells Phil. "The doctor suggested it, and I agree. We can't have this happen again. She said that you're lucky you didn't get a concussion."
Great. That's just what this kid needs right now. It's not like she's made him into a big enough dork, now she has to go get him a helmet, just in case anyone missed the point the first time around. I look back at him to try to sympathize, but I don't think he even heard her. He's just staring out the window while he leans forward so he can kick the cast. I don't think he even realizes what this is going to do to him at school.
I consider telling my mother what a bad idea this helmet is, but it's not worth the trouble. Nothing I have to say would change her mind, and I don't want Phil to know I think he's a dork. I know that's not a nice thing to think about your brother, and I feel bad about it, but just cause he's my brother doesn't mean I don't notice how weird he is. For instance, right now, he's just stopped kicking his cast and started singing to himself. He does this all the time, and he always gets the words wrong. He usually gets the chorus and a few lines from each verse, but what he doesn't know he just fills in with nonsense. And now he's started butchering "Hakuna Matata." I turn on the radio, hoping he'll get the message and stop. He doesn't, so I turn it up louder to drown him out. I swear, he can be so aggravating, sometimes I want to beat him up. I can see why everyone in his school does.
He had it a lot better when I still went there. Some kids would pick on him-some would even hit him-but It was pretty clear that he wanted to fend for himself. One time I had to step in, though. It was about a week after he had a seizure in class, and some kids were trying to get him to do it again. I can't really blame them for wanting to see it again; Phil's seizures are kind of cool to watch. The first time it saw it happen, it was scary, but after we found out he doesn't get the bad kind, my mom and I learned to relax and let them happen. When he gets a seizure, he immediately drops what he's doing and becomes perfectly still. After a while, he starts to shake. It's not violent shaking, though-it's more like vibrating. He snaps out of it soon enough, and he usually tries to act like nothing happened.
The kids refused to believe he couldn't control his seizures, though, and decided to beat him up for not showing them one. My friend Stephanie saw it happening and came and told me about it. I didn't want to intervene-I knew it would be worse for him, in the long run, for him to have his sister come to his rescue-but it was a free-for-all. When I got there, four or five kids were standing in a circle shoving Phil around between them, playing catch with his little body. I guess one of them thought it would be funny if instead of punching him, they'd throw him onto to one of their fists. When I saw what they were doing, I put a stop to it. I was bigger than any of them, so I grabbed one of them a gave him a black eye. He and his friends got the message, so from that day to the day I graduated to sixth grade, no one touched him. But lately it seems like they have been making up for lost time.
Apparently, they make special helmets for epileptics. I discover this fact when my mom takes us to a special store for "disability accessories." That's what they call them here. The place is wall-to-wall with all sorts of wheelchairs and crutches and leg braces. Phil and I are naturally anxious to explore this place, but first they have to get his head sized. The salesman doing the measuring is huge. I can hear the fabric of shirt strain as he kneels down to my brother's height.
"What's your name, sport?"
"Phil"
"How'd you break that arm?"
"I got ran over by a car."
"Phil, honey. You know that's not true," my mother chimes in, "He fell down the stairs."
"But Tracy said-"
Fortunately the glare I toss him cuts him off before he gets too far.
"Well you got to watch out for those stairs. They're tricky little bastards."
I glance at my mother for her reaction to the salesman's language. Her polite smile shifted from to an angry grimace for a moment and then back. I'd seen that face before, when Phil called the bus driver a motherfucker. I'm glad he didn't get busted for that one. Then would have told my mother where he learned that word.
The salesman needs two tries to get back to his feet after fitting Phil with a helmet. But when he steps out of the way and I see Phil in his helmet I have to suppress a smirk. He looks ridiculous: the helmet almost doubles the size of his head, which was a little too big for his body to begin with. The helmet is bone-white, just like the case, which the salesman makes note of.
"You should go into crime-fighting, what with your bulletproof helmet and arm. Matter of fact, Batman got his start right here when I fitted him with a leg brace. Fixed that posture right up."
"Batman's not real."
"Well of course not, but he was based on real guy. Friend of mine named Rich Peltzer. You should talk to him sometime about getting into the business."
"No thank you. My mom says I have to go to college, so I can be a dentist."
"And why not, that's a good business. Your mom's a smart lady."
The salesman and my mom go off to pay for the helmet, and we sneak off to look at all the weird stuff in the store, trying to figure out what all the odd arrangements of aluminum rods and rubber padding are for. Our mother's argument with the salesman about insurance reaches the back of the store; we know we have plenty of time to look around.
Phil is still in his helmet. He's deliberately smashing his head into things.
"Stop doing that."
"Why? It doesn't hurt. This is a really good helmet. That guy said it was bulletproof."
"Maybe, but it's not fistproof. Knock it off."
But instead of knocking it off, he tries to head-butt me and chases me into the next aisle. The next aisle is wheelchairs. Phil asks me to push him around in one. Ordinarily, if he had asked me to push him around in a wheelchair, I'd tell him it was too dangerous, but I guess with his new bulletproof helmet, it's worth a try. I push him back and forth along the aisle a couple times.
"Go faster"
"You're too heavy"
"I am not too heavy, you're just too weak."
"You want to see who's weak? We can settle that if you want to."
"Ooh. Let's race!"
"I don't want to. Besides, can you even control this on your own?"
"It's easy. You just push the wheels with your hands."
"Okay, then, let's race."
"Only you have to ride in that slow one, because you're too fast."
"That's not fair. If I'm faster, I'm faster. That's what races are for."
"It is too fair. You're bigger than me so you have to be in the slow one so I can keep up."
"Whatever. I'm still going kick your little bony butt."
We decide to do a lap around the store. Now that my brother is a superhero I don't have to go easy on him, and I take the lead on the first leg. But what he lacks in speed, he makes up for in maneuverability. I get stuck trying to make the turn and he catches up and whizzes past. He has small lead through the second aisle, and I get stuck in the second turn, too. By the time I get around the corner he's already halfway through the aisle. He is starting to go dangerously fast. I jump out of my chair to chase him. He tries to brake, but the hand with the cast slips off the wheel, and he slams loudly into the wall. He flies out of his chair and slides across the floor into a rack of scoliosis braces.
It was almost funny. If it had happened to anyone else, it would have been hilarious. But it happened to Phil, so I'm terrified. My mom and the salesman run over. They pull the braces off of him, and he's convulsing on the floor. The salesman is worried. We are too. He's never had two in the same week before, let alone the same day. What if the fall down the stairs caused permanent damage? What if he wasn't wearing the helmet right? I start to feel really bad for letting him race, but then I see what's going on. Phil is laughing his head off. He's fine. He wants to do it again.
I have never seen my mother more enraged than she is right now. She picks Phil up and drags him out to the car. His feet barely touch the ground. She doesn't tell me to follow, but I do anyway. When we get to the car, she yanks him around, plops him over her knee, and spanks him. Eight hard slaps-one for each year of his life-are exactly what it takes to make him stop laughing. After Phil's whipping, we all get into the car.
"When we get home, you're both grounded. Go straight to your rooms."
After that, there is silence in the car as we drive home. We stare straight ahead, trying not looking at each other. I finally look back at Phil, and he's got the biggest smirk on his face. It's such a silly looking grin, made all the more silly with the plastic contraption on his head. I want to be mad at him for scaring me before, but I can't help but grin in return. The grin is trying to turn into a giggle, which I try to hide as a sneeze. That only works for so long until Phil and I burst out laughing and don't stop until we get home.